Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Gingerbread Playdate, The Adorable Chaos

What happens when you throw a gingerbread cookie-decorating party for a playgroup of toddler boys?

There is an abundance of ADORABLE in your house -- and a lot of sprinkles on the floor!

Henry's friends arrived at our house and we began the playdate by having the boys press gingerbread dough into the baking pans.

The boys carried their pan into the kitchen and watched the moms put their gingerbread man cookies into the oven to bake.
As the cookies baked, the boys sat down at the table to listen to the story of the gingerbread man. Surprisingly, they were really interested and GASPED as the gingerbread man LEAPED out of the oven and ran out the door! "Run, run as fast as you can! But you can't catch me! I'm the GINGERBREAD MAN!" There was a mid-story toddler meltdown, so I had to jump in and finish the story for Rachel... I'm in a picture - YAY! :)
After the story, we told the boys to go check on their gingerbread cookies in the oven {which had been sneakily removed while their attention was on the book} and when the moms opened the oven with the small toddlers at safe distance away from the heat, they were all surprised to see that there were NO GINGERBREAD in the oven!! We told them, "Oh, no!! The gingerbread ran away!! We need to find them!" and the toddlers went running through the house trying to find them! They ran to the front door first -- which all of the moms thought was super adorable since in the story, the gingerbread man runs out the front door! Toddlers are smart!!
They eventually found them back on their table!
Once they found all the cookies, then it was time for the BEST PART - the DECORATING!!
And the even BETTER PART - THE EATING!!!
And, of course, we tried to take a picture of all the adorable little boys in their aprons! That kind of worked...
A gingerbread playdate is so much fun during the holidays! If you'd like to create a party like this one, the printables are available for FREE download HERE